[antegamisou]

> tales of technological ingenuity are mostly just an attempt to invent some romantic lore around stolen designs.

This is a biased take. One can make a similar and likely more factual claim about the US , where largely every innovation in many different disciplines is dictated and targeted for use by the war industry.

And while there were many low quality knockoff electronics, pre-collapse USSR achieved remarkable feats in many different disciplines the US was falling behind at.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation...

[MountDoom]

> One can make a similar and likely more factual claim about the US , where largely every innovation in many different disciplines is dictated and targeted for use by the war industry.

That's a complete non-sequitur.

[some_random]

>where largely every innovation in many different disciplines is dictated and targeted for use by the war industry.

As opposed to the USSR who's wikipedia page for innovations proudly features, lets see;

Aerial Refueling

Military robot Paratrooping

Flame tank

Self-propelled multiple rocket launcher

Thermonuclear fusion (bomb)

AK-47

ICBMs

Tsar Bomb

to name a very small selection

It's almost as if you have it completely backwards and it was the USSR who was centrally planning to innovate in the art of killing.

[antegamisou]

I don't know if you deliberately skipped the 90% of other inventions that had nothing to do with -mind you- defense from American imperialism or you're being dense on purpose. Probably both?

Anyway just glancing the respective page for US "innovations" one can easily tell which country had the most obsessive offensive war industry.